Thanks were also voted to Mr. John Paterson “for his great care and diligence in executing the orders and directions of the Master and Governor about the defence and preservation of the rights priviledges and property of the Company” and to further mark their sense of the same, the Court unanimously elected Mr. Paterson as Clerk. The two Beadles, Henry Gretton and William Littlebury were re-elected. It was ordered that all Charters, Books, Plate and goods belonging to the Company, then in the custody of Mr. Joseph Wheeler (the late Clerk) should be delivered to Mr. Paterson, who was to make and sign an Inventory of the same, and also to examine Mr. Wheeler’s accounts, and report thereon to the Court. The Common Seal was directed to be altered by omitting the words ET CHIRURGORUM and by adding ANNO MDCCXLV. A Committee was appointed to peruse the By-Laws of the late United Company, and to report as to which of them required amendment or were fit to be repealed or added to. 8th August, 1751. Mr. John Brooks attended and produced a Deed to which he requested the subscription of the Court; this deed recited that by an Act of Parliament passed in the 10th year of Queen Anne, it was enacted that a duty of 2_d._ per lb. should be laid upon all starch imported, and of 1_d._ per lb. upon all starch made in Great Britain, that no perfumer, barber, or seller of hair-powder should mix any powder of alabaster, plaster of Paris, whiting, lime, etc. (sweet scents excepted), with any starch to be made use of for making hair-powder, under pain of forfeiting the hair-powder and £50, and that any person who should expose the same for sale should forfeit it and £20. Also that by further Acts additional duties were laid upon starch. And by an Act passed in the 4th year of George II the penalties were somewhat mitigated. “And whereas the said laws with respect to hair-powder have by experience been found not to answer the end proposed by the Legislature, the sum arising by the said duties upon starch and hair-powder having gradually lessened, whilst the fair traders have been great sufferers by the practice of those who by the greatness of the duty have attempted to make vend or use the said prohibited articles. And whereas the trade or business of making vending or dressing of Perukes or other Ornaments of hair for the head and also of cutting and dressing the hair of the head being considered as distinct from the business of Barbers is under no regulation whatever,” etc., the parties whom Mr. Brooks represented (and whose names were signed to the deed) had, therefore, agreed to join in an application to Parliament for reducing the duties on hair-powder, as also for incorporating all persons carrying on the trade of Barbers and Peruke-makers within the Bills of Mortality, into one joint Corporation or Body politick, and for restraining persons from exercising those trades who had not served seven years’ apprenticeship.